Letter: Seeking guidance to understanding the misguided

Editor: I’ve read more than one op-ed deploring the nomination of former Senator Chuck Hagel for the office of Secretary of Defense on the grounds that, while Hagel may be a bright, experienced, patriotic, and well meaning fellow, he is misguided.

Misguided. In most instances it’s political code for liberal. The user, usually Republican, intends to convey the claim that, while the nominee would appear to be sufficiently smart and savvy, he is operating from a set of specious, scurrilous, or discredited major premises.

His critics then further conclude that, although such folks hold positions that may seem reasonable from some naively neutral perspective, their world view has been so distorted by liberal influences that they simply cannot be trusted to do what’s best for the American citizenry. In the Hagel case, that means being declared out of sync with his party, making him a leprous RINO, or Republican In Name Only. It’s the GOP’s version of excommunication.

Setting aside the question of whether liberalism is inherently inimical to the nation’s well being, one should wonder exactly how such misguidedness is thought to originate. Is it genetic? Does it result from having grown up in a household devoid of more healthy conservative values? Is it an infection that attacks the young as they sit in leftist liberal arts college humanities classes?

Is “misguided Rhodes scholar” an oxymoron or, with the single exception of Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, an inevitability? Are otherwise admirable people doomed to lives of misguided behavior by drinking the Kool-Aid dispensed by the insidiously liberal mainstream media? Have they also succumbed to the exhortations of the godless who would have us reject the righteous character of American jingoism?

Finally and most importantly, can the misguided be rehabilitated or reprogrammed or, like gays and lesbians, are they hard-wired into a lifelong choiceless hell that knows neither reversal nor redemption? I’m sure someone will let me know.